Random Politics & Religion #20

Who knows who leaked two pages of Donald Trump's tax return.

But the leak, such as it is, does no harm to the President. It shows he actually paid income taxes -- at least in 2005. Whether the President had paid income taxes recently had actually been something of an open question.

The journalist that published two pages from Donald Trump's 2005 tax return says he doesn't know who provided the documents; he got them in the mail.

"Yes," Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston replied when CNN anchor Poppy Harlow asked him if he thought the two pages, which show Trump paid $38 million in taxes on more than $150 million in income that year, could have been sent by the President himself.
"Donald has a long history of leaking things about himself and doing it indirectly and directly," Johnston told Harlow and Chris Cuomo. "So it's a possibility." He published the returns on his website DCReport.org

The White House has hit back hard against the publication, calling it illegal in a pre-emptive statement Tuesday night. Then President Trump himself weighed in Wednesday morning on Twitter, suggesting Johnston wasn't being forthright.

"Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, 'went to his mailbox' and found my tax returns? @NBCNews facts I don't like!" tweeted the President.

The White House has not responded to a request for additional comment.

Trump didn't mention that The New York Times, when it reported Trump claimed $916 million in losses in 1995, which could have sheltered him from tax bills for many years, similarly received those more politically damaging documents in the mail.

The tax shelter created by those losses could create for some interesting return if Trump officially or the mysterious leaker were to provide return for other years. Additionally, the details of Trump's return would be instructive, too, answering questions about his charitable giving, if any, specifics about the losses he claimed -- $105 million in 2005 despite his tax bill, and more.
It is clear from evidence in lawsuits that there are years in which Trump paid no federal income taxes -- something he bragged about during a debate with Hillary Clinton.

"That makes me smart," he said on the debate stage, although he later clarified to CNN's Jim Acosta that he had paid income taxes.
Trump had long said he wouldn't release his income taxes because he is under some kind of long-standing federal audit. More recently, aides have said he might not release them at all. After all, he won the election.

But as Jeffrey Toobin pointed out on CNN Tuesday night, the questions about Trump's tax return have only grown more fascinating as questions have arisen about his campaign and business ties to Russia. Trump has denied current business connections to Russia, but he also denied the campaign aides had any contact with Russians in the lead-up to the campaign.

That sentiment was echoed by Edward Kleinbard, the Johnson Professor of Law and Business at USC Gould School of Law and a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation.

"Only complete returns can resolve the questions swirling around his alleged financial obligations and sources of income, such as Russian oligarchs or other sovereign countries," Kleinbard told CNNMoney.

News of the tax return and the fact that he did pay millions in taxes also provided a detour from questions about ties to Russia, the fragile health reform legislation he has pushed with House Speaker Paul Ryan, but which is in deep peril on Capitol Hill and scrutiny of his stunning claims that former President Obama wiretapped him during the campaign.

Another interesting element of the story is that Trump has listed large-scale tax reform as one of his major legislative priorities. Republicans are supposed to take up that issue after passing the first leg of their Obamacare repeal plan -- assuming they can pass it.

Repealing or fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax is sure to be on the table as Republicans go about their goal of lowering tax rates for most Americans. That'll be a more comfortable conversation for Trump to have with everyday Americans now that he can say he's paid the tax, too.

And it's a big reason whey Democrats, who have called repeatedly in the past for the release of Trump's rax returns, have warned the release of these two pages is a distraction from more important matters.

Free non-stop boat trip to a place not surrounded in ice and permafrost!

Why 2005 though? Why not 2012, 2013, 2014 etc.

The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday for the second time in three months, a move spurred by steady economic growth, strong job gains and confidence that inflation is rising to the central bank's target.

The decision to lift the target overnight interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 0.75 percent to 1.00 percent marked a convincing step in the Fed's effort to return monetary policy to a more normal footing.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen pointed to growing faith in the economy's trajectory.

"We have seen the economy progress over the last several months in exactly the way we anticipated," Yellen said in a press conference following the end of a two-day policy meeting. "We have some confidence in the path the economy is on."

The Fed also stuck to its outlook for two additional rate increases this year and three more in 2018. The central bank lifted rates once in 2016.

Stock markets extended gains .SPX and bond yields fell on the benign economic outlook and the continued steady path of rate rises signaled by the central bank. The dollar .DXY was trading lower against a basket of currencies.

Fed policymakers noted that inflation was now "close" to the central bank's 2 percent target, and that business investment had "firmed somewhat" after months of weakness.

However, they did not flag any plan to accelerate the pace of monetary tightening, with the policy-setting committee reiterating and Yellen emphasizing that future rate increases would be "gradual." At the current pace, rates would not return to a neutral level until the end of 2019.

Rather, the Fed's statement said the inflation target was "symmetric," indicating that after a decade of below-target inflation it could tolerate a quicker pace of price rises.

"It relieves some of the fears we've had that perhaps the Fed was going to raise rates faster in the future. They've chosen not to signal that," said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial.

'NOT A CEILING'

Labor groups have urged the Fed to raise rates as slowly as possible so hiring can continue and wage increases take hold.

U.S. job gains have averaged 209,000 per month over the past three months, well above the 75,000 to 100,000 needed to keep up with growth in the working-age population. The jobless rate is 4.7 percent, at or near a level consistent with full employment.

The Fed projected that the unemployment rate would fall to 4.5 percent this year and remain at that level through 2019.

Yellen, who has consistently said that the Fed was better equipped to fight inflation than a fresh downturn or surge in joblessness, did not rule out inflation edging above target.

"This seemed like a good time to remind Americans that ... sometimes it (inflation) is going to be below 2 percent, sometimes it is going to above 2 percent," Yellen told reporters. "Two percent is not a ceiling."

Fresh economic forecasts released with the statement were largely unchanged from those of the December policy meeting and gave little indication the Fed has a clear view of how President Donald Trump's policies may impact the economy.

"We have not discussed in detail potential policy changes that could be put into place and we have not tried to map out what our response would be," Yellen said. "We have plenty of time to see what happens."

She added that she had held meetings with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and met with Trump once since he took office.

The Fed's projections showed the economy growing 2.1 percent in 2017, unchanged from its December forecast. The median estimate of the long-run interest rate, where monetary policy would be judged as having a neutral effect on the economy, held steady at 3.0 percent.

Core inflation was seen as slightly higher at 1.9 percent versus the previous 1.8 percent forecast.

The rate increase came amid a broad improvement in the world economic outlook and a sense among Fed policymakers that the U.S. economy is close to the central bank's employment and inflation goals.

According to the policy statement, the risks to the outlook remained "roughly balanced."

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari was the only official to dissent in Wednesday's decision, saying he preferred to leave rates unchanged.

A) Point to me saying that Republicans are saints and/or not capable of being petty little beings and/or above it all.

B) At the very least, Republicans in Congress isn't goading it up like Democrats did from 2009-2010 (until they lost the midterms).

And they were rightly called out for it by the MSM. Now, if only the MSM will call out the pettiness that's happening on the liberal side.....

Oh wait, they are with them in the pettiness.

Sounds personal.

And, here I was hoping that you at least changed for the better. Well, I should know not to get my hopes up.

It's hard to come together when one side is constantly having a hissy fit. Last time it was the Republicans, now it's the liberals/democrats.

Why are you here Flavin, other to make personal attacks that is.

he almost at times seems deliberately set on keeping people split up...

Also... trump campaigned on the promise and continued to say after he was elected he would bring the nation together... right now he's on track to fail just like obama did in that regard... it's really easy to just say oh well the democrats are being little *** now so it makes it hard... well you go into it knowing that we are deeply divided as a nation... it's not like it's an unknown... he almost at times seems deliberately set on keeping people split up...

This is you earlier today targeting viscosity.

That must be Canadian autocorrect because I don't know how you get there from an actual word.

Everyone knows that King has a personal vendetta against the thickness of fluids.

you can't complain about personal attacks while targeting users and mocking them.


then you overreacted implied that my post here was the same thing.



Can you not see the difference between these two posts?

Shush it's likely just because I was talking a lot of physics last week and fluid dynamics

I'm not interested in what kind of pettiness you believe individuals deserve to experience.

I don't like the term superiority complex. How is it complex? I'm simply better than you.